EXPLOSION AT NEW YORK.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 934, 22 December 1910, Page 2

EXPLOSION AT NEW YORK.

New York, Dec. 20. Thirteen men were killed and many injured through an explosion igniting the gas tanks and dynamite in the six-storey power station of the New York Central Railroad at New York.

The explosion was caused through the ignition of the gas tanks, from which the flames spread to the dynamite store. Altogether one hundred and twenty-five persons were injured by the explosion, and several of these are expected to die. Ninetyeight were admitted to the hospital.

The accident was due to a train of empty cars wrecking a gaspipe at the rear of a buffer-stop. The escaped gas accumulated, and was exploded accidentally by an electric spark.

A street car and an automobile were hurled together by the force ot the explosion, and four of the latter’s passengers were killed instantly. A stenographer was speared through the head by a flying piece of timber.

A policeman was leading two little girls across the street. One was torn from his hand and hurled yards away. The other had one of her legs cut off by a flying sheet of iron. f Tables in the Teachers’ Train-/ ,ing School, adjoining the power V

station, were spotted with blood blown up from the street, and babies were flung out of baths in a babies’ home in the vicinity of the explosion. Thousands of windows were wrecked, a neighbouring fire station collapsed, and the powerhouse was demolished, all the cars in it being smashed.

The damage will probably total a quarter of a million sterling.